The Town
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: A novelization of "The Town," a Mission: Impossible episode in which Jim stumbles into the most dangerous case of his life when he least expects it, in a tiny, tranquil town in Arizona.
1. Prologue

**Author's note: I was watching "The Town" yesterday for the second or third time, remembering how it put me on the edge of my seat the first time I watched it, and thought to myself, "I need to write this story." So I am.**

* * *

_Prologue_

Doc William Tappert of the fine little town of Woodfield, Arizona (he'd almost forgotten the time he'd been called Radek Zelenko, so long ago) leaned against the table in his basement and addressed his people. There were about twenty of them there, quite enough to control a small town, and not a one of them looked like anything but a normal American of middle-age, for the most part. Doc himself was the epitome of a country doctor, oldish, tallish, heavyish, whiteish hair, with a little salt-and-pepper mustache and a very kind face.

"Now, Jan and Martin will register at the hotel and wait for the subject to come to his room. The importance of this assignment should be obvious to everyone, but I want to emphasize it. The subject _must_ be killed—"

He was interrupted by the sounds of heavy footsteps on the stairs. He tried to continue. "—in order to discourage other defectors. Now, Jan's part is to get into the room—"

But Bob Williams and Sheriff Roy Brown had shoved a man into the room, a tall, good-looking, Nordic-type man in a hunting coat who looked indignant and stared at everything. Everyone stared at him and started whispering amongst themselves. Doc sighed inside. Obviously this stranger had stumbled across something he shouldn't, but did they really need to bring him _here?_ It was so typical of Bob and Roy's shortsighedness. Look at all the maps on the walls and the kill dummy for demonstrations! He sighed again and stepped down from the platform.

"Take over," he told Henry Bates and hurried over to Williams and Brown. Williams gave him an apologetic look.

"We thought it best to bring him to you."

When he heard their story, he decided perhaps it was for the best. The situation needed his subtle hand, not their sledgehammer approach. If the stranger had to be killed, it had to be done in a way that didn't look like murder.


	2. Chapter 1

_Chapter 1_

_Just a little while earlier_

It was a beautiful early fall day in western Arizona. Jim Phelps smiled to himself, enjoying the drive. The air was warm enough to drive with the top of his long, blue convertible down, blowing his flaxen hair back pleasantly, but he was thankful for his jacket. It was going to be a nice little vacation, hunting with Rollin in the Arizona mountains. They were after elk for the first time.

Jim had decided that he was going to do something like this with each of his primary IMF members at least once every couple of years. It hadn't been Dan Briggs' way, but he wasn't Dan Briggs. He and his people were friends, and he wanted to continue to build a good rapport with them. The idea had occurred to him last year when he first went hunting with Rollin.

About half an hour after crossing the border from California, he pulled into a tiny town called Woodfield. Charming place, all green trees and white picket fences. He still had at least an hour to go, but the last time he got gas, he'd found that his radiator was hotter than it needed to be, so he pulled into the first gas station he found, a garage with a large sign that said "Williams Garage," and honked twice. A man swung away from the open hood of a truck in the garage and grinned at him, wiping his hands on a cloth.

"Howdy." He had a round, smiling, pleasantly lined face.

"Hi!"

"What's it gonna be? Gas, oil, water, or plain conversation?" the man asked, grinning and coming up Jim's car.

Jim chuckled. "Well, how about a little bit of each one?"

"Alrighty. Which one you wanna start with?" He had a deep twang to his voice that pointed further east than Arizona.

"Well, you might start by looking at the radiator. I think it's overheating."

The man nodded. "That's that desert driving, does it all the time."

"Yeah."

The man went around to the front of the car and popped the hood while Jim got out and stretched. It had been a long drive from Los Angeles.

"Whew," the man said, testing the radiator with ginger slaps. "That's hot!"

"Yeah, what do you think?"

"It probably needs to be flushed."

"You'd better do it. I'd hate to get stuck going up the mountain."

Williams (he was assuming for the moment the man was the Williams of Williams Garage) grinned again. "I figured that's where you were going. Deer season brings out people from all over! Usually come in groups, though."

"Yeah, well, I'm meeting somebody up at the lodge."

"Ah ha."

"Any place I can get a cold drink?"

"Oh, yeah, right there." He pointed away down the block to his right, where Jim could see a number of pretty white buildings. "The pharmacy."

"Oh, good. Back in a few minutes."

"Right."

Jim strode off down the pavement and came to the pharmacy about half a block away, entered to the sound of a pleasantly jingling bell. It was a typical small-town pharmacy, all medicine, candy, stuffed animals, and a soda fountain. A girl in a brown uniform popped immediately out of the back room.

"Hi!" she called, beaming all across her round, pretty face.

Jim walked up to the soda fountain and seated himself, smiling back. "I would like something cold, wet, and not too sweet."

She answered with a sort of cheeky cheerfulness, "I think I'll fix you my specialty."

"Alright."

She turned away and began concocting a drink as the bell jingled again.

"Is the prescription ready, Gina?" a young man asked, coming up to the counter and setting a suitcase on the floor.

Gina set a red drink with a straw in front of Jim. "Uh-huh. Doc left it in the back. I'll get it."

Jim glanced up at the young man and the young woman with him, a pretty girl in a green traveling coat, and they all smiled politely at each other. He took his straw out of the drink (he hated straws) and gave it a try. Gina's specialty was just what he wanted. It wasn't a very hot day, but the desert dryness had certainly gotten to him. She came back and set a white paper bag on the counter.

"Put it on the charge, OK?" the young man said, taking the bag.

Gina grinned at him. "Sure. Have a good time!"

"We will," the woman in green answered.

Jim returned to his drink from his inconspicuous perusal of the couple. You couldn't help examining every person around you for potential threats, even on vacation, when you had his job. A fairly normal couple, off to the big city for a vacation of their own, perhaps.

Just as he decided that, he learned he was wrong and stumbled into the most dangerous case of his career to date.

* * *

He'd just started to take another sip of his drink, which was really very good, when his soda fountain stool jolted and almost knocked him off. The young woman had tripped over her husband's suitcase on the floor and fallen headlong. Jim glanced down in concern and stared in shock. The paper bag had tumbled to the floor with her and disgorged its contents, a gas gun now billowing blue smoke. As his reflexes took over, shooting him up to clap a handkerchief over young Gina's face and haul her out of the building, his eyes couldn't help observing, because that was what they were trained to do, that the suitcase had also fallen open and revealed something labeled with the Los Angeles Park Regent Hotel logo.

He stood outside on the porch with Gina and the young man and woman, all coughing and gasping in great breaths of air, while a crowd gathered. "I think you'd better get her to a doctor," he said to the young man, gesturing at his gasping wife, who had gotten the brunt of the gas.

The young man nodded, took her arm, and drew her away down the street.

_Why a gas gun?_ he was just wondering, the oddness of it masquerading as a prescription just now coming to him, when Williams came hurrying up.

"My car ready yet?" he asked him.

"Alright, Mister. Come along," said someone behind him, and he turned to see a tall, portly sheriff and to feel the man's pistol in his ribs. He stared.

"What do you mean? Come along where?"

"Where I point you." The gun cocked. "Move."

He turned to stare at Williams, who gave him an impassive nod. There was nothing to do but go, moving through the townspeople who did not at all seem perplexed at the sudden state of affairs, and it occurred to him that if they were trying to cover something up, they sure were doing a good job of drawing attention to it.


	3. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2_

The sheriff prodded Jim down the block, through a gate, and down a driveway toward a large, white house with many white balconies. Rather than going into the house, he paused in front of a smallish outbuilding, like a shed, while Williams (if that was who he was) opened the door, and they both prodded Jim down the steps that appeared inside the door. He stumbled into a basement-cum-meeting room filled with people who were listening to a gentle, Southern voice which seemed to be talking about defectors, a word which made Jim's ears prick up. Defectors were in his line of business.

An elderly man came hurrying toward them while another man took over his speaking duties before the audience.

"Williams, what in tarnation is this?"

"We thought it best to bring him to you," William said. "Jan busted that canister right in front of him. What else were we supposed to do? By the way, Marty's took her to your office. The gas got her pretty bad."

The man sighed. He had the look of a long-suffering saint. "Liz'll look after her. Well, I guess you did right. Who's he?" He nodded at Jim, who had one ear on their conversation and one on the man in the brown suit speaking to the audience.

The man in the brown suit was saying, "Marty will phone Doc at exactly 5 o'clock tomorrow and be given Green for Go, or if we've received other instructions, Yellow for Hold, or Red for Cancel."

"Going up the mountain for the hunting. Meeting someone there," Williams said. "I made sure of that, same as usual."

"Well, I'd better get up to the pharmacy. I'll have to mix up some new stuff for Jan, or she'll be off schedule!"

"What about him, Doc?" the sheriff asked. "Shall we arrange an accident?"

Jim, trying to piece the situation together as quickly as possible, stared at the doctor.

"Not if he's meeting someone up there. Is that true?"

Williams shrugged. "If they do trace him back here, his car went off the road."

"No. I won't have anyone messing around here until Jan and Marty are out of town. Otherwise it'll be difficult to arrange an alibi, if they should need one." His eyes narrowed. "I think I have a way. Take him on over to my office, and I'll meet you there after I get Jan and Marty on their way."

The doctor followed behind as Williams and the sheriff shoved Jim back up the stairs. At the top of the stairs Jim tried to dart out the door and get the drop on the sheriff, but all three of the men were on him in a moment, and by the way they had him on the grass in a couple of seconds flat, he could see that they had had special training. Small-town doctor, sheriff, and mechanic they were not. He tried to analyze what he had seen in how they moved to figure out what sort of training they had had, but it had all been too quick.

The young man came hurrying out of the white house to help them.

"You got him?" the doctor asked. "Marty, when Jan is feeling better, bring her back to the pharmacy so you can get on the road."

"Sure, Doc," the tall young man answered and helped Williams and the sheriff drag Jim into the house.

There was a full doctor's office there, where a no-nonsense-looking nurse with an elaborate coif was attending to the young woman from the pharmacy. They both stared around at the three men dragging a struggling Jim. The nurse quickly left Jan and shoved a chair forward.

"Here. Roy, grab some of those bandages to tie him up with."

When the sheriff released Jim, he struck out, but the nurse was swift. She slapped a hand with a cloth in it over Jim's face. He only had time to become aware of the strong smell of ether before darkness overcame him.

* * *

Rollin Hand had been waiting quite a while at the large stone and pine lodge up the mountain. Jim, who liked early starts, had promised to meet him there no later than noon so they could have lunch before their first afternoon of hunting. It was well past noon.

"I'm waiting for a friend," he told the desk clerk. "Could you check to see if he checked in before me? Or called? Maybe I'm waiting in the wrong place."

"Name?" the young man asked.

"Phelps."

The clerk looked through check-in cards. "Mr. Phelps…Phelps. Well. He didn't call. You think he's not coming? We got people who want that room."

"No, hold the room. He'll be here."

"Maybe he's stuck on the road somewhere. Lotsa city cars have trouble getting up here."

Rollin frowned. "I think I'll go back and look for him."

"Why, sure."

He went out to his car, which had already done all the hard work of coming up the mountain, despite being a city car, and a very sporty city car at that. Reluctantly, but slightly worriedly, he drove back down the mountain slowly, keeping an eye out along the sides of the road for Jim's big, blue convertible.


	4. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3_

"We put him upstairs in the green room, Doc, just in case anyone comes," Liz Marlow told her superior. "He'll be unconscious for a good while yet."

"Well done. I'll go up and check on him. Bring that tray."

Doc Tappert went up the stairs to one of the rooms he kept for patients, planning out how this was going to work. The stranger's friend would probably come looking for him, so it all had to be handled very delicately, but at the same time, it might ultimately be good to have a witness to the man's death. The friend could testify, if necessary, that Doc and Liz had done everything they could for the sick man. No courtesy would be spared. All the stereotypes of the American country doctor would be played to the hilt.

The tall, blond stranger was lying in the bed next to the window in the room with green-patterened wallpaper. Someone had brought up his suitcase, and his things were lying neatly on the spare cot against the wall. Doc took a moment to go through them. A couple of changes of clothes, a cap, pajamas, toothpaste, a paperback mystery, a car magazine, all typical. In his wallet he carried cash, one of those new charge cards, a spare key, and a driver's license in the name of James Phelps.

"Well, Mr. Phelps," Doc told the unconscious man, "looks like you're about as average a fellow as can be, but you've got yourself into something not quite so average now. Can't be helped."

Liz came in with the tray and set it on the table next to the bed.

"You got the procedure down?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Good, then help me roll him onto his side and prepare the first syringe."

They turned Phelps onto his side, and Doc pulled up his shirt while Liz filled a large syringe. Doc took it and carefully injected it into the man's spine, then handed it back and received the second, smaller syringe. He spent a moment carefully examining the back of Phelps' neck and head before slowly sinking the needle into the base of the brain.

"There we go. We'll see how that works. Get him into his pajamas, will you, and then repack his bag. Call me when he regains consciousness."

"Yes, Doctor."

Doc Tappert gave her a smile as he went out. A good girl, Liz. Quick thinking, and not many nurses would do the sorts of things she sometimes had to do. Their people had trained her well.

* * *

Williams had just finished gassing up Marty and Jan's car. He leaned down into Jan's window. "You all set?"

"Mmhmm," Marty nodded.

"How do you feel now?" he asked Jan.

"Fine, thanks."

"Good. Your gas, oil, and water's all full now. Car's in good shape, won't cause you no trouble. Just don't get a flat tire. You got food for dinner?"

"Yes, Bob," Jan said patiently.

"OK, good luck, huh?"

"Thanks," Marty said.

Williams stood back, and Marty started the car and pulled out of the lot. He passed an olive green sports car just pulling in. Williams took a moment to give it an appreciative once over. Nice car. It pulled up to the gas pumps. The man inside was youngish, a thin, square look to him, dark, with a large, distinctively square mouth. He was wearing hunting clothes.

"Howdy! What will it be?" Williams asked in his carefully cultivated hick-town accent.

The young man was staring across the lot at the big, blue car the stranger had come in. "That car over there—You know where the owner is?"

Williams leaned his shoulder and hip casually against the gas pump, his arm tucked behind him. "You know him? Is he a friend of yours?" He quietly opened the door in the side of the pump and pressed the alarm button inside. It wasn't the first time this thing had come in handy.

"Yes, he is," the dark man answered.

He pressed the button a couple more times, just in case Doc hadn't heard it. "Boy, Doc is gonna be glad to see you." He stepped down and leaned against the car. "Yeah, your friend, he took sick. He was sitting right in that car where you are and he just keeled on over. He's sick. He's in the doctor's office."

The man's grey-green eyes had gone wide. "Where's that?"

"It's right behind you. Big bright white house right there on the corner."

"Thank you."

"Right."

The man jerked his car around and gunned it through Doc's front gate and down the long driveway to the house. Williams opened the door in the gas pump again and pressed the button a couple more times.

* * *

It had taken Jim a while to come to his senses, and when he did, he began to wish he hadn't. It seemed as though something heavy were lying on his body, holding him down, preventing him from moving. It even took several tries to get his eyelids open. He could see a white ceiling, green wallpaper, an open door, a hallway and banisters outside, and on the wall the dancing shadows of leaves from a tree. Early afternoon light, he automatically noted, while his brain went quietly into the panic that even the best agent feels when he's trapped. He struggled against the weight imprisoning him and couldn't budge it a fraction, only succeeding in making his heart race and his breathing accelerate.

A face appeared over him, and his heart jumped again. The nurse—she had knocked him out. She gave him a clinical look, and then he could see her leave the room, bend over the banister, and call down the stairs.

"Doc! Phelps is awake!"

He began to consciously calm his breathing as heavy steps came slowly up the stairs. Rolling his eyes down as far as he could, he took stock of himself. There was no weight on him, just a blanket. He _was_ the weight, his body nothing but an unmoving mass, a prison for his mind, which was trying to panic again. Sternly he took it under control.

The white-haired man he remembered at the meeting came in and came over to the bed. "Hello, Mr. Phelps. I'm Doc Tappert. Please try to remain calm. I'm going to give you a little checkup. Can you move at all?"

Jim glared at him.

"Good. No masquerade, then. I'm afraid you're in a lot of trouble, Mr. Phelps. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can't afford to let you go, so you're just going to stay here for a while, nice and quiet. Can you talk at all?"

_If I could, I would be shouting out the window._

"Good. Now, I want you to rest assured that there will be no pain. You'll die right here nice and quiet, just like you'd want your old mother to die. But you will die, so best you get yourself used to the idea in your mind and make your peace. Liz here is going to stay with you, so there's no use in getting any ideas about escaping. If your friend comes looking for you, you'll have had a stroke and there's no real hope of your recovery. I'm sorry it came to this, but there's no help for it. You just try to rest now."

The doctor left the room and went slowly back down the stairs, not knowing that his warnings had actually been heartening. Of course Rollin would come looking for him, and he would recognize immediately that something was wrong. Jim began to fit together all the pieces of the puzzle of this creepy little town together as, far away, the sound of a buzzer went in the background.


	5. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4_

Rollin hurried into the doctor's office and paused uncertainly in the door, until he saw the gentle-looking doctor in white coat coming toward him, drying his face and hands with a towel. "Oh—how do you do?" Rollin said automatically.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Yes, I was told a friend of mine was here. He's ill. Phelps. His name's Phelps."

The doctor said genially, "Oh, I'm glad someone finally turned up for him." He went to his ornate wooden desk and sat down, putting on his glasses.

"Well, what's the matter with him?"

"It is very serious, Mr…?"

"Hand," Rollin said. He knew he was staring, and he just couldn't help it. It seemed so _wrong_ for Jim to suddenly come down with something in the middle of nowhere, Arizona. Jim had been tortured in Asia, imprisoned in Europe, starved in South America. He couldn't suddenly be _ill_ in _Arizona__._

"Mr. Hand. Your friend is suffering from aphasia."

Rollin leaned on the desk and stared at him.

"He's had a stroke."

"A stroke?" he said dumbly._ Jim doesn't have strokes. He's barely over forty._

The doctor nodded. "A massive one, judging from all my tests. The man can't talk."

"Well, why hasn't he been sent to a hospital? He's got to get the best possible care."

"Oh, too dangerous to move him. Another stroke could kill him."

_Kill—!_ You didn't expect this. You expected it on a mission, that any moment your friend's cover could be blown and he could be shot, locked up, anything. You didn't expect it on _vacation._ That was what was so hard to cope with. If a man like Jim was to die, it should be in a Russian prison cell or a Rhodesian jungle or in a shootout with the Irish Mob. Not in a bed, like an old man.

He realized he'd closed his eyes and opened them, taking a deep breath. "We've got to get a specialist here. I don't mean to offend you, Doctor, but—"

"There's no offense," the doctor said gently. "We country doctors can't hope to compete with these big city specialists. Who'd I call?"

"The best man there is, Doctor."

The doctor gave a gentle nod of his white head.

"Can I see Jim?"

"Oh, of course. Yeah, it might be nice, just knowing you're here." He patted Rollin on the shoulder and led the way out of the office. Rollin followed, giving a swipe at his suddenly perspiring forehead.

"I'm Doc Tappert, by the way," the doctor said as they went up the stairs. "You can just call me Doc. Your friend's in here. My nurse Liz is looking after him. Not much to do in this case, but he needs to have someone near."

The nurse was reading a newspaper as they entered. Rollin hardly noticed. He only saw his friend and superior lying in a bed by the window, unmoving.

* * *

Jan and Marty were traveling Route 66. They had gone over the whole plan in detail and were now traveling in the companionable silence of professionals who work well together, which was precisely what they were. A sign that flashed past said, "Barstow: 164 miles."

* * *

Jim heard the doctor's voice on the stairs. There were two sets of footsteps; the other's was a man's, by the sound of them. _Rollin?_ he thought hopefully. _Please be Rollin._

The doctor's voice came into the room. "How's he doing, Liz?"

"No change," the nurse answered. For too long there had been no sound but the rustle of her newspaper.

"This is his friend, Mr. Hand."

_Thank God. _

Rollin's voice, greeting the nurse perfunctorily. The doctor's face, leaning over him.

"Mr. Phelps, your friend is here. Mr. Hand."

Jim was trying with every ounce of strength to move, to speak, to give _some_ indication.

"Jim?" Rollin's face swam into view, haggard, his oddly-colored eyes wide with worry. "Jim, it's Rollin."

He paused. Jim tried again.

"Do you know me, Jim? Do you recognize me? It's Rollin."

_I _know_ it's Rollin! Can't you see?_

"It's Rollin, Jim. Do you understand, Jim? We're going to get a specialist down. Everything is going to be alright, Jim. We're gonna give you the best possible care."

He was slightly unconvincing. Rollin, the great impersonator, couldn't even impersonate himself being hopeful? Jim really thought this time he was going to get _some_ sound out, but all he heard was his own breathing. Rollin's face disappeared.

"You're doing everything you can for him, Doctor?"

"Naturally. But you better be prepared. He might have another stroke at any time, even if we keep him quiet. It might prove fatal."

_Stroke!_ Jim thought indignantly. _A good ploy,_ he had to admit grudgingly. Anybody could have a stroke. These people really were professionals. But what precisely were they _doing?_

Rollin sounded shaken. "I understand."

"I'll see that we get a specialist down here right away. You'll take care of all the expenses?"

"What—? Of course."

"Liz knows where I am if you need me."

The sound of the doctor's footsteps. Stillness. Even the newspaper rustling had died down. Then he felt a hand on his forehead and could see Rollin's face again. His poor friend looked as anyone might who had just discovered that a good friend was unexpectedly dying.

_Rollin, start thinking like the agent you are!_


	6. Chapter 5

_Chapter 5_

It was quiet in the room. Rollin stood by the window looking out at nothing and occasionally glancing at Jim. His friend was staring at the ceiling and had not moved a muscle.

_He could be _dying! he thought. It was impossible to believe. _Should I contact anyone? Cinnamon? Any of the others?_ Jim had no close family members. His life was the IMF. _Of course the Secretary will have to be notified, if…_ _Wait,_ he decided. _Wait until the specialist comes. Then we'll know, and then will be the time to start contacting people, if it's even necessary. This old man might not even know what he's talking about._ He was trying to delude himself, he knew. Doc Tappert might be an old country doctor, but he was a sharp one.

"I'd better go contact the lodge," he said suddenly to the nurse.

She nodded. "The doctor will let you use the telephone in his office."

"Thank you."

He went downstairs and paused at the door of the office. The doctor was on the phone, nodding and writing something down.

"Alright. Yes, yes. Thank you. I'll phone there right away." He hung up the phone and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Doctor—"

Doc started. "Oh, I didn't see you there, young man. What do you need?"

"Just to use the telephone for a moment, if I may."

"Of course. I was just trying to get ahold of that specialist. I know of a good one in Phoenix, but he seems to be away in Chicago. I've got the number of where he might be, though."

"Thank you, Doctor," Rollin said humbly. "Shall I—" He gestured to the doorway.

"Oh, no, you go right ahead." The doctor pushed the phone to the other side of the desk.

Rollin called the lodge up the mountain and cancelled the two rooms he and Jim had taken. The desk clerk sounded positively gleeful.

"I'm sorry your vacation had to be interrupted this way," Doc said. "It's never pleasant."

"No," he murmured. "Thank you, Doctor. I'll get out of your way now."

As he left the office, he heard Doc dialing again. "Hello, is that the Congress Plaza Hotel? Yes, I'm looking for a Dr. Albert Stephens…"

He returned to the room. Nothing had had changed, except the nurse had started reading a book in place of her newspaper. She gave him a somber smile as he entered, the sort you give to someone in a situation like this. Rollin drew a chair up near Jim's bed, under the window.

"The doctor's calling for someone he knows, Jim. A nice fellow, that doctor. Someday we'll have to ask him to go hunting with us, if he hunts…"

He presently ran lamely out of things to talk about. He didn't even know if Jim could hear him. For all he knew, the mind was completely gone. He didn't know enough about strokes. That research had never come up in one of his missions. Why not? People had strokes, and it might be a good idea to fake one sometime…. He nearly blushed in shame when he realized he was staring at Jim to try to identify the physical hallmarks of a man who'd just had a stroke to see if he could imitate them. Jim would have chuckled if he knew, but still, it was hardly decent.

The newspaper appeared in front of him. Liz was holding it out. "Something to read?" she said kindly.

He took it. "Thank you."

* * *

Doc went down into his underground meeting room, where the training meeting was still in process. Henry Bates was demonstrating the kill technique Marty would use that evening to about fifteen of their people. Doc believed in transparency in his organization. They had an unusual setup here and needed to have absolute trust in each other. His superiors had given him nearly carte blanche when they began this experiment thirty years ago. Just after the war, that was. Thirty years in one tiny town, slowly taking it over with agents, turning it into a base of operations for all their missions in the Southwest and California. It had worked beautifully, he thought.

Williams came over to him, and Doc drew him out of earshot of the others. The garage man was his second-in-command and the town's first line of defense against outsiders.

"Is there any trouble?" Bob asked.

"He's convinced. He expects his friend to die."

"Well, when will that be?"

Doc was a little surprised at Williams' impatience. He wasn't an eager man for a kill, not like Bates there, who was just a little too eager (but so good at it and at training that Doc had never wanted to send him back).

"Two stages, I think. I'll give him a stronger dose later on this afternoon. It'll look like another attack. Tomorrow the final one."

Williams nodded.

"Any other strangers come through?"

"Just a couple more hunters stopping for gas. They left again straightaway."

"Good. How's Gina?"

Williams' daughter was a fine girl and had the makings of a good agent in her. At sixteen she was already Doc's assistant in the pharmacy and had helped him put together the first batch of gas for Jan.

"She's fine. I sent her home, though, told her to take it easy. Phelps sure was quick to help her."

Doc raised his shoulders, and Williams nodded understandingly. Phelps could not be helped. The situation was what it was.

* * *

Jim was slightly relieved when Rollin stopped nattering and settled down with the newspaper. _Now _think, _Rollin. Stop being grieving-friend-of-the-dying-man and _think!

"I'll bet there's going to be some wild demonstrations in Los Angeles," Rollin said.

"Oh?" Liz asked.

"Mosnyevov. The rocket expert."

"Is he the one that defected?"

"Yeah. Big speech to our rocket people."

"I guess we should be happy to get him." Liz sounded disgruntled. "But still, any man that would turn his back on his own people—!"

_Mosnyevov,_ Jim thought while the discussion went on the background. _Mosnyevov, now._ Things were finally falling into place in his mind. What a setup! It was perfect. And the only person who could expose it was paralyzed and mute. _Rollin, how can I get across to you?_ He tried again and found that he could just make the fingers of his right hand tremble a little. Was it wearing off, whatever they had used? But Rollin was sitting on his left and couldn't see his right hand. _Rollin! They're doing this to me! Look at me! I'm going to try to control my breathing._ He breathed heavily, could feel perspiration break out on his face. Rollin glanced over at him, sighed, and returned to his newspaper. Jim kept diversifying his breathing, as far as he could.

"Is he alright?" he heard Rollin asking.

"It's just reflexes. Poor man probably doesn't even know he's doing it."

Rollin sighed again.

_Rollin, pay attention to me!_

"Could you get me one of those tissues over there, please?"

Footsteps, a slight rustle, then he felt dabbing on his face.

"Anything I can do?" Liz asked.

"No—no, thank you," Rollin said.

Jim opened his eyes, slowly, because they would only open slowly, and looked up into Rollin's odd face. _Look at my eyes, Rollin! Look. At. My. Eyes!_ He began laboriously blinking an SOS in Morse Code.

After gently mopping up the perspiration on Jim's face, Rollin sighed, _again,_ and took his seat again. Heavy disappointment sank through Jim's mind.

* * *

Jan and Marty were two hundred sixteen miles from San Bernardino.


	7. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6_

Rollin picked up his newspaper again. For a few moments he stared at it, not really reading. Something was niggling at the back of his mind. He examined it and then felt as if his brain had flared. _Jim._

He stared intently at the newspaper, glanced once at Jim, saw the blinking he had at first taken for uncontrolled fluttering, glanced over at the nurse. She was quietly reading. In a swift motion he threw down the newspaper and got up, went to look out the window and stretch out his back muscles.

"You know what I could use?" he asked Liz. "A good steaming hot cup of coffee. Why don't you fix us a couple of cups, huh?" He tugged at his shoulder until his neck popped.

She looked uncertain.

"If he stirs I'll give you a yell."

She got up and looked at Jim, whose eye blinking stopped instantly. "Alright. I'll be right back." She left the room.

Rollin instantly hurried to Jim's side and bent over him. "Jim! Is that an SOS you sent me? If it was, blink twice."

Jim's eyes blinked twice, though agonizingly slowly.

Rollin's brain whirled. "Blink once for yes, twice for no. Are you really sick, Jim?"

Jim blinked twice again. _No._

"Are you drugged?"

_Yes._

_Great merciful heavens!_ "The—the Doc!"

_Yes._

But—why…? "I've got to get you out of here. I'll call the police—"

Jim's frantically slow blink stopped him. _No._

"Are they in on this?"

_Yes._

"Well there must be somebody in this town who can help us."

_No._

_No? How can a whole town be in on a plot to kidnap Jim?_ "I'll—" Rollin began, but the door opened, and Liz came in with a tray and the smell of coffee. "I'll just have a cup of coffee, and, uh, I'm not going anywhere."

"Is something wrong?" the nurse asked solicitously.

Was _she_ in on it? She had to be. How could you hide drugging a man from your nurse? "No. I was just trying to calm him in case he can hear." He thought quickly. _It's a mission, just another case, that's all. I need Barney, Willy—Cinnamon!_ "I didn't want him to think I was leaving before his wife gets here."

Liz whirled around with the coffee pot in her hand. "His _wife?"_ There was real consternation in her voice.

Rollin started toward her. "Well, surely you must have notified her!"

"Well, I don't know. The doctor didn't say anything."

"Well, that's ridiculous!" He strode toward the door. "Where is he? In his office?"

"Well, yes, but—"

Rollin rushed out the door.

* * *

Jim let his body relax. He was as exhausted as if he had been climbing a mountain. At last. _It took you long enough, Rollin._ But he could leave it to Rollin now. The wife ploy would get Cinnamon at least here, and Rollin would think up some way to get at least Barney and Willy, if not others. He could trust his team. They were the best.

* * *

Mr. Hand came striding into Doc's office. "Doctor! You've called Mrs. Phelps, haven't you?"

Doc looked up from his paperwork. "Why—well, I didn't know there was a Mrs. Phelps." He knew he sounded more doddering than usual. That was probably good, in this case. A wife, though? That only made everything all the more difficult. "I went through his things to see who I could notify, but I couldn't find anything. I told you that."

The young man stared at him. "What? You did?"

He nodded. The friend put a hand to his forehead with a shudder.

"Oh, I must be more shaken up than I thought—I never heard you. Which means she still doesn't know. May I use your telephone, Doctor?"

"Well, of course!"

He got up from his seat, gestured to the phone, and "politely" left the room. In his own private living room, he pressed the buzzer that rang into Bob Williams' garage. Then he left the house and walked down the block to the garage. By the time he got there, Bob was already at the hidden switchboard behind the shelf of paint, listening in on the friend's conversation with the wife.

"How is it?"

"Sounds alright," Williams answered, still listening.

"That's good."

* * *

Cinnamon Carter had just settled back in her favorite brocade chair with a book and a cup of tea. She didn't often get a chance to sit down and read. If it wasn't an IMF mission, it was a modeling gig or a speech to a Ladies' Guild of some sort. Today, though, she had the whole evening, _Gone With the Wind,_ and Earl Grey, and nothing was budging her from her spot.

The phone rang. Cinnamon sighed. She considered not answering, but you couldn't not answer your phone when you did the kind of work she did.

"Hello?"

It was a man's voice. Rollin? It sounded like Rollin. "Hello, Mrs. Phelps, please."

She sat up slowly. Rollin was hunting with Jim. They'd only left this morning. But if he was asking her to be Jim's wife over the phone, there had to be some trouble, and someone was probably listening in. "Speaking," she said warily.

"Hello, this is Rollin. I—I—don't know how to tell you this, but Jim is…ill. Very ill."

"What happened?"

"He's had a stroke."

She blinked, confused. "What?"

"I think you better get up here right away." That was code for _We're in deep trouble._ "Now, I don't want to leave Jim, so you better rent a car—" He broke off. "Wait a minute. Now, you'll be in no condition to drive, so why don't you rent a car and a driver—hire a driver at the airport, alright?"

She was shaken but taking careful note of everything he said. A driver was obviously Barney. "Yes, alright, I'll do that."

"Fine. Now, can you leave the baby alright?"

She looked around her tranquil, baby-less apartment. "I'll make arrangements," she said, waiting for the dénouement of his ad-hoc code.

"Tell little Willy that Uncle Rollin will see him very, very soon."

_Oh, Willy, of course._

"Oh, by the way, would you bring some of my things? We might be here a while. Now, better get a pencil and paper and write down the directions."

She interrupted, not only because Jim's wife would but also because her own stomach was in knots. "Rollin, is Jim going to be alright?"

"I…don't know."

And his voice was so uncertain that her hand shook as she wrote down the flight information he gave her and the traces of instructions he managed to slip in among the travel details.


	8. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7_

Cinnamon sat still for a moment, gathering her faculties. Then she picked up the phone and dialed Barney Collier.

"Hullo?"

Just hearing his calm voice was a mental relief. "This is Miss Carter. Could you send your repairman an hour early? I have an appointment I need to get to."

His voice went alert. "Of course, Miss Carter. I can have someone over there in fifteen minutes."

"Thank you. That will be perfect."

She hung up the phone and dialed Willy Armitage. "Oh, Willy, this is Cinnamon. Won't you pop over and get that book I promised you? Well, it's just I have to go out of town, and you just _have_ to read it."

"Sure, I'll be right over," Willy said easily. Nothing ever seemed to get to him. His voice hadn't even changed.

While waiting for them to come, Cinnamon ransacked her closet for clothing-for-a-grieving-wife-whose-husband-had-a-stroke-while-hunting, not omitting a large gold-and-pearl ring on her left ring finger for a wedding ring. She efficiently packed her suitcase and had it ready by the time Barney rang her doorbell with a toolbox in his hand. Even in Los Angeles, it wasn't quite the thing for a single woman of Cinnamon's position to receive a black man as a caller or guest, and her position was her cover, so much as she hated it, she could only call on him as a workman. He never seemed to let it get to him. She never failed to admire his aplomb and dignity.

Willy came just a moment later, and she quickly explained what little she knew of the situation. Then she and Willy both looked to Barney for a plan. He thought for a moment.

"Rollin says they're at the doctor's house in a small town not too far from where they were going hunting, and he spoke to you from the doctor's phone?"

Cinnamon nodded her lovely platinum-blond head.

"Then he doesn't trust the doctor. Has Jim really had a stroke, I wonder? Rollin wants his makeup, so he thinks he'll need to masquerade as someone. With you as Jim's wife, you'll be in the house, but Willy and I have no reason to be there. Unless—" He turned swiftly. "Willy, you'll be a truck driver. You'll break down, try to fix it, injure yourself, and have to go to the doctor's office. Cinnamon, did you get the address of the house?"

She handed Willy the paper she'd written it on.

"Right," the big man nodded. "I'll break down right there. I'll go out right now and get a truck and make some alterations. Driving I should be getting there about the same time as you in the morning, if you have to fly into Las Vegas and drive down from there."

"Right. Cinnamon, we'll make separate flight arrangements but on the same flight, and then I'll rent a car from there. Being there as your driver will give me a chance to get the lay of the land."

"I have to go collect Rollin's things," she said. "Call me at his apartment and tell me the flight information."

"I'll do that."

They all went their separate ways and performed their separate tasks with the calm efficiency of IMF agents, but Cinnamon wasn't the only one who felt like she might get an ulcer from worry.

* * *

Rollin paced up and down the doctor's office. He was ostensibly "resting." He'd tried hard to get Doc to let him stay in the room while he did an examination of Jim, certain they were going to drug him again, but there was just no reason for Mr. Hand, the friend of a sick man, to try to interfere with the sick man's doctor. To keep up his own cover, he had to allow it. He went downstairs reluctantly, tried to eat the sandwich the Doc had left for him, and paced instead of resting. The moment he heard someone on the stairs, though, he threw himself down on the couch in the attitude of a man exhausted by grief.

* * *

Doc Tappert returned to Phelps' room after finally convincing his friend that he didn't have to spend every moment by his side. "It won't do him any good if you kill yourself," he said. "Take a rest. Then you'll be all the better for keeping him company a while longer tonight. Unfortunately, he probably can't even hear you anyway."

He'd left the shattered-looking young man downstairs. Poor fellow. It was a pity innocent people got in the way of important missions.

"He's coming around," Liz said as he entered. She was filling a new syringe.

Doc checked the time. "Well, just on time." Phelps had managed to turn his head to stare at him.

"Where's his friend?"

"Resting in my office. Also waiting to hear from Chicago about that…specialist."

Liz grinned. "He'll have a long wait."

"How you doing?" Doc asked Phelps. Might as well keep up the country doctor routine. He had settled into it and it into him. He _was_ a kindly country doctor, as well as an enemy agent hidden in plain sight.

The man grunted, perhaps in pain, as Doc rolled him onto his side. He took the first syringe from Liz and injected the spine again; this time Phelps was fully conscious and made a sound of pain.

"What is this stuff you're using?" he mumbled, perhaps to distract himself.

Doc looked up at footsteps entering the room. Only Williams. "Curare," he said conversationally. "The stuff Brazilian natives put on their spears to paralyze their prey. A weak solution keeps you from moving." It was a very delicate process to get the solution right. It had to be strong enough to paralyze the man but not so strong it interfered with his respiration, as curare had a tendency to do. He took the second syringe from Liz. "This, ah, speech thing is a little more difficult. You have to take special care. Have to anesthetize the lower cranial nerves." He injected Phelps in the base of the skull, and the man groaned again.

"How—how long have you been in this town?"

"A long time, for a very special purpose." He smiled, remembering the pride he'd felt when he was first appointed to lead a team here. No one could have imagined how successful they would be, how many missions they would accomplish over the next thirty years.

"Like killing Mosnyevov?"

He didn't let his hands, slowly giving the injection, jerk at all in his surprise (didn't want to kill the man too early), but he raised his eyebrows and glanced over at Bob. It was a very good deduction. Impressive. He and Brown had definitely done right in taking Phelps into custody. Of course it didn't matter that he knew. He couldn't do anything about it now.

"That, among others." So many others. He couldn't even remember them all now. They were all written down in a ledger, placed, with his other, medical ledgers, in his safe, looking no different from the notations of his real medical cases, a name, a date, success or failure, a medical diagnosis that stood as code for the objective. The assassination of John Witherspoon, a senator from New Mexico. The poisoning of every person at a dinner party to cover up the murder of a Russian diplomat named Evgeny Grishin. The theft of an armored vehicle which was passed on to another cell to be used in a heist of some sort. An attempt at penetration into the excavation of Cheyenne Mountain, the new nuclear bunker in Colorado, to cover up an entirely different objective nearby.

Williams interrupted his thoughts. "In the case you have company when that phone call comes, from Los Angeles, shall I give the final order?"

Doc glanced at him sharply. "No! The final orders come from me. No matter who's here, they won't know what I'm talking about."

Williams spread his hands apologetically. "Just trying to be of help."

_Either that or planning for the time when you can take over my position._

Phelps seemed to have fainted. Doc shooed Williams out and performed a brief examination. He was fine. But he had too be carefully observed and his friend kept away from him overnight, in case they had to give him another dose in the middle of the night.

* * *

Jan and Marty had stopped in Barstow for the night. They could have driven straight through to Los Angeles, but Doc had told them to stop halfway there and get well rested. Their objective was too important to do half-exhausted.


	9. Chapter 8

_Chapter 8_

"I'm afraid your friend's much worse this morning, Mr. Hand," Liz said. "He had another stroke last night."

Rollin stood at the foot of Jim's bed, hating himself for not thinking up a reasonable excuse for staying with Jim overnight. There was even an extra cot there. But Doc had told him sternly that Liz was going to be sleeping on that cot so she could instantly be on hand, and what could a concerned friend who was definitely not an IMF agent do but obediently go get a hotel room? Jim had given him a languid, single eye-blink, so he had obeyed and gone, but he shouldn't have. He didn't know what they were giving Jim. He could die of it before the others even got here, with Rollin sitting by his bedside looking on and doing _nothing._

Jim's blue eyes lighted on him, and an eyelid quivered. Nothing more. Less a blink than a wink, really. Rollin sighed, sat down, and opened the newspaper he'd brought over from the hotel.

* * *

Cinnamon slid into the back seat of the long, black car and half-smiled at Barney as he closed the door and put her bags in the trunk. She'd flown first class and hadn't seen him at all during the flight after boarding; he'd been somewhere in the back of the plane, wearing a neat black suit that made him look like a businessman in the airport, until he put on his chauffeur's hat, which turned the suit instantly into a uniform. Cinnamon had outfits that could be turned from one thing into another at a moment's notice, but her orange traveling dress and brown, black, and cream plaid coat definitely were not among them. This was the dress of an affluent woman who couldn't afford to betray her frantic fear to anyone on the airplane.

Barney pulled the car out of airport parking. "We'll be there in two hours," he said. "Don't worry, Cinnamon. We'll be there in time."

_There's no way you can know that for sure,_ she thought, but she didn't say it, because she knew he was trying to reassure himself, too.

* * *

Willy had left Los Angeles a little while after Cinnamon and Barney and was driving the big white truck he'd rented with the windows down and the radio on. He enjoyed a good, long drive by himself, just him and the road and the countryside. And one thing he refused to do was worry about a situation he knew very little about. Once you found out that a situation was impossible to resolve was the time to worry about it. Before that it was just a waste of emotional energy. Willy preferred to spend his energy on physical action. He wasn't like Barney. Barney was an intellectual man who kept a tight lid on himself and did it so effectively that very few people understood what really boiled beneath the surface. Willy, though, had a naturally even keel and didn't tend to get all hot and bothered, merely because he couldn't see the point. Placid, someone had described him once. That seemed about right. Barney wasn't placid. "Controlled" was the word to describe him.

Just for a test run, Willy pressed down on the newly-installed lever next to the shifter. Immediately a loud squeal shrieked out from under the truck. He grinned and pulled up on the lever. He and Barney had spent most of the evening installing the neat little noisemaker, nothing more than a scrap of metal that would scrape against the inside of the front right wheel and sound like the whole vehicle was about to fall apart. A simple device, but installing it had been a bear. He hoped the people he'd rented the truck from didn't mind the new hole they'd drilled in the floor.

* * *

It was nearly noon. Liz and Doc had given Rollin no chance to get anything new out of Jim. One of them was always there, sitting in the room like a gentle, ministering angel. They'd promised him that the specialist would be getting here this afternoon from Chicago. He had ceased to believe in the mythical specialist a long time ago.

Outside a car came down the driveway. Rollin bolted to his feet and leaned toward the window. A long black car pulled up to the house; a black suit and cap got out and opened the passenger door, and a platinum head and a plaid coat emerged. His back to the room, Rollin closed his eyes in intense gratitude for a moment. Everything was going to be alright now.

He turned away from the window and put his hand on Jim's shoulder. "Your wife is here, Jim. Cinnamon is here. You're going to be fine, Jim. She got a car and driver from the airport, and that specialist is about here, too, so don't you worry about anything, Jim."

Cinnamon was already hurrying in ahead of the Doc, rushing past him, bending over Jim, her hands going out to his shoulders. He saw she had not omitted to put on a wedding ring.

"Darling! Darling. It's going to be alright. I was so worried, but I'm here now—it's going to be alright."

"We've got a call into Chicago for the best man there is," Rollin said reassuringly. "They're trying to locate him for us."

Cinnamon wheeled on the doctor. "He's going to be alright, Doctor, isn't he?"

"He's had a bad night, Mrs. Phelps. We can only hope for the best," Doc said in a faint imitation of reassurance without much real hope. He put his hand on her shoulder. "I suggest that you try to remain calm. For his sake."

She nodded frantically, and Rollin took a moment to admire the fact that personal emergency or not, she had not lost the true Cinnamon touch of pathos stopping just short of melodrama. "Yes. Yes, of course, I understand," she said and bent over Jim again, stroking his face with tears in her eyes.

"Here, Cinnamon. Sit here by him." Rollin moved his chair up next to the bed.

Cinnamon sat down and took Jim's hand, looked up at Rollin with her lovely, tear-filled eyes. "Tell me everything, Rollin."

* * *

As the driver, Barney stayed outside with the car. He leaned against it for a while, looking bored. After a while he wandered inside and found the doctor's office, with the white-suited doctor at his desk.

"Hope I'm not interrupting, Doctor," he said in a soft drawl. "You got that sick man, Mr. Phelps, here?"

"I do," the doctor said perfunctorily.

"Mrs. Phelps, she didn't tell me what I should do, go back to Las Vegas or wait around here."

"Well, you just wait a minute, and I'll find out."

"Appreciate it."

When he heard the doctor's steps going up the stairs, he swiftly looked through the papers on and in the desk and into all the cupboards. There seemed to be nothing but what you'd normally find in a doctor's office. If these people were up to something weird, they'd left no sign of it here. When the doctor came back downstairs, Rollin behind him, Barney was leaning against the doorpost.

"I'll help you bring in Mrs. Phelps' bags," Rollin said.

Barney nodded and led the way outside. As soon as they were away from the house, Rollin, a step behind, started speaking rapidly under his breath without moving his lips.

"I came here, and they said Jim had had a stroke. I believed them until Jim communicated an SOS. He's been paralyzed with some kind of drug, and I can only guess that they intend to kill him and make it look like it's another stroke. He must have stumbled across something going on, but I don't know what. No way of knowing."

Barney opened the trunk and leaned in. Rollin leaned in beside him.

"Willy's coming in a truck," Barney said. "He'll fake an accident and come in to give you back up. You'll want to be in the doctor's office when he comes."

"Got it."

"Cinnamon got your go-bag."

Rollin pulled it out of the trunk. "Barn—this is the wrong one. It's not got my latex—I ran out."

Barney gave him a quick, sideways glance. "Then you'll have to improvise, if you intend to play someone."

"I'm good with improvising."

Rollin took two bags and Barney three, and they carried them inside.

"We don't know what's going to happen," Rollin told him in the voice you use to speak to a stranger. "Stick around for a few hours, huh? Your time will be paid, of course."

"Yes, sir."

He went back outside and leaned against the car again. Then he gave a bored shrug and started a bored-looking wander down the driveway and along the road. Time for some reconnaissance until Willy got there.


	10. Chapter 9

_Chapter 9_

Jan and Marty were a hundred ninety-one miles from Los Angeles. They had risen early, but not too early, having gotten a good night's sleep, and had been driving for a while now. They'd get into Los Angeles with plenty of time to spare.

* * *

Willy's trip had taken longer than he expected. He hadn't anticipated the truck he rented not being able to go over fifty miles per hour. He was going to have to reevaluate the company he'd rented it from. But he was here now, and it was time to go to work.

He drove down the main street of the town, and just as he saw Barney leaning against his rental car, he pressed down on his lever. The metal shrieked, causing everyone within hearing distance to turn and stare. He pulled into the wide shoulder just between the garage and the big, white house, got out of the truck with slumped shoulders and a frustrated expression, and crawled under the front of the truck. Barney had seen him, he made sure.

A man came striding over from the garage and leaned against the cab. "I'd say y'all got some trouble."

Willy had a wrench at work under the cab. Yesterday he and Barney had created a mechanical problem he could activate instantly and either make worse, if he needed more time, or fix quickly, if he needed to leave. It also had to look real in case someone, like this mechanic, insisted on helping.

"Yeah, I sure have," he said laconically. "It's happened twice in the last hundred miles."

"Well, we got a tow to the next town. You want me to call?"

_Absolutely not._ "Never mind. I don't have the kind of money they'd ask for anyway. I can fix it."

"Wa'al, you need anything at all you just holler out, hear?"

"OK, yeah."

"Alright." The man walked away.

When he was completely out of the way, Willy pulled out his pocketknife and used it to cut a tear in his jacket, then took a little bottle out of his pocket. It was full of a thick, viscous red fluid that looked more like ketchup than anything in the bottle, but when he poured it over his forearm it looked like nothing so much as blood, lots of it. He tucked the bottle and knife into a hidden compartment under the truck.

* * *

Barney, leaning in a highly bored attitude against the long, black car, heard a crash of metal from under Willy's truck and Willy's voice cry out in pain. He shoved off from the car and bolted down the driveway toward the truck as Willy inched out from under it and leaned against the cab, clutching his arm and trembling. The garage man was hurrying back over, so Barney quickly made as though to support Willy and said, "That's a bad cut. You're going to need stitches."

"Where's the nearest doctor?" Willy gasped as Williams ran up to them.

"You guys are lucky, I tell ya, buddy. He's in there." He nodded toward the house. "Outside of him they ain't one for fifty miles. I'll take him in."

"It's alright," Barney said, looking highly competent. "I can handle it." And Willy sagged against him so that he had no choice but to be the helpful one and leave Williams behind. "Come on. Come on." He led Willy down the driveway.

* * *

Cinnamon was still holding Jim's hand, looking like she could sit there all day as the frightened, devoted wife, while Rollin let himself be nervous, pacing up and down the room, picking up the newspaper, putting it down again, looking out of the window, every once in a while saying in an overly loud, frustrated voice, "_Why_ isn't that specialist here yet?" Liz kept trying to soothe him down.

Finally he heard a horrendous noise outside and the sound of a large vehicle. Like anyone would, he went to the window and looked out in time to see a white semi-truck pull up nearby and, one of the most wonderful sights in the world, Willy get out. He watched a minute, like anyone would, then let the curtain drop with an irritable sigh.

Cinnamon looked up at him. "Rollin, I'm so glad you're here. I don't know if I could do all this without you."

That was his cue. He went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll handle all the details with the doctor. Don't worry about anything."

She nodded brokenly. He squeezed her shoulder and turned and went downstairs. The doctor was at his desk, as always.

"Do you think that specialist is going to get here any time soon?" he asked plaintively.

"I just heard that he's in the air now. He'll be landing in Las Vegas soon and then driving down here. It won't be more than a couple of hours."

Rollin sank down on the sofa and put his head in his hands. "I—I can't bear this."

The doctor sat down next to him and put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "How long have you known Mr. Phelps?"

"Several years. I've known his wife longer. She and my sister were good friends. And then she married Phelps, and he and I became friends instantly. The same sort of people, you know?"

Doc nodded gently. "Yeah, I know. I got some friends like that. I only hope the other doctor gets here on time."

"He does look pretty bad, doesn't he?" Rollin sighed, thinking his opponent's impression of a hearted doctor trying to give hope where there is none was slightly ineffectual, and that, too, was purposeful. "Well, if the worst should happen—"

He was interrupted by two sets of footsteps and the sight of the chauffeur in his uniform nearly carrying a very tall man with blood dripping down his arm.

"Oh! What have we here?" Doc exclaimed. He hurried toward them. "Let's have a look."

Rollin rose after him and struck him sharply across the back of the neck. Willy caught him as he fell, gave a quick nod, and Rollin and Barney rushed upstairs.

* * *

After Rollin left the room, Cinnamon sat still for a few moments, stroking Jim's hand. A sideways glance at Liz showed her deep in her book. _That's no way to keep watch,_ Cinnamon thought contemptuously. _Are you a complete amateur?_

She leaned down and picked up her purse, rummaged inside, found her handkerchief, and used it to wipe her eyes with a few sniffles. Liz glanced up with a halfway sympathetic smile and returned to her book. Cinnamon, contemptuously again, pulled a tiny bottle out of her purse, opened it, and held it ready. Downstairs her quick ears caught a hint of Rollin's voice. Then Barney's. Then rapid footsteps on the stairs. Liz rose from her chair as the door opened; Cinnamon dashed liquid from the bottle onto her handkerchief, bolted up out of her chair, and clapped her handkerchief over Liz's nose and mouth before the young woman could do anything but start forward in protest. She held her hard as she struggled, and Barney hurried forward to help, while Rollin went over to Jim's bedside.

* * *

Jim could see little, but he could hear the struggle. Lying and being unable to do anything hour after hour was the hardest thing he had ever had to do. He'd been imprisoned before, sometimes not even on purpose, but it was nothing to being imprisoned in his own body. But Cinnamon had come, and now here was Barney, and Willy was sure to be near. Cinnamon had been talking to him about "Baby Willy," who loved trucks, which was not hard to read between the lines.

The sounds of struggle soon ceased, and there was the sound of the creak of the springs of the cot against the wall where Liz had spent the night. He guessed she was going to be spending a little more time there. Rollin's face appeared over him.

"Jim, we've taken over the house. Are you alright?"

_Yes,_ he said.

"Good."

He could see Barney come close and approach the window.

"Jim, we haven't got time for questions and answers, so we're going to use Morse Code, OK?"

_Yes._

"Let's start." Rollin pulled out a small notebook and sat down in Cinnamon's chair.

Jim began laboriously blinking out everything he had seen, heard, and deducted over the last two days. If only he could move his eyelids faster! This was going to take forever.

* * *

Jan and Marty had reached Los Angeles. They would be at the Park Regent Hotel in half an hour.


	11. Chapter 10

_Chapter 10_

The whole story had gradually come out, and now they all knew how much larger the picture was than rescuing one friend. Now it was another mission, with stakes just as high as any other mission.

Jim had pieced together this picture: Years ago, this little Arizona town had been taken over by agents from some enemy country. It was impossible to know which country, at present. They had become moles, saboteurs, assassins. Who knew how many operations they had carried out in the western United States over how many years? Each member of the team could remember several unsolved political cases in Los Angeles alone in the last ten or fifteen years. Now they were after Mosnyevov, the valuable scientist-defector. Two assassins, a young man and a young woman, had been sent out to kill him. The killing might or might not involve gas; if it didn't, there was a secondary target, possibly some kind of sabotage or a bombing at the space conference in Los Angeles starting that very day. Doc Tappert was in charge of the town, but he answered to someone higher up, and it was possible that a signal might come through pausing or stopping the operation altogether. Jan and Marty were to call from the Park Regent Hotel that evening at 5 o'clock precisely and get their orders. Rollin had the code for the orders written out:

GREEN – GO

YELLOW – HOLD

RED – CANCEL

Rollin was in charge now. He swiftly gave out the orders and then recapped: "One: We've got to prevent that killing in Los Angeles. Two: We've got to get Jim and ourselves out of here in one piece. Barney, keep everybody out until we're done. Then Willy will go for help."

Barney nodded and went swiftly out.

"Cinnamon, you come with me. And Willy, you stay with Jim."

Willy nodded as well and went to the window. Everything was quiet and still outside, a sultry fall afternoon in Arizona.

* * *

Jan unpacked her maid's uniform in the hotel room and put it on. Marty already had his bellhop uniform on and was sitting on one of the beds with his feet up, reading the newspaper. Jan gave the newspaper a look of loathing. The headlines said:

SPACE CONFERENCE OPENS

FORMER SOVIET EXPERT SPEAKS

The television was going, too. The traitor, the despicable Pavel Mosnyevov, was speaking at a press conference in his ridiculous accent. "Outer space belongs to all peoples for peaceful exploration," he said, to great applause.

Jan whirled on her partner. "How can you listen to him?"

Marty said laconically, "It doesn't bother me. A target is a target."

That was the one problem with Marty. He was the person she most liked to have for a partner because he was so efficient, quick, and quiet, so dedicated to doing his job right, but he had almost no political conviction. He did his job because it was his job, not because he was devoted heart and soul to the Motherland and her objectives and her glory. If _America_ gave him a job to do, would he do that, too?

* * *

Doc Tappert had found himself in an untenable and completely unforeseen situation. One minute he'd been hurrying to help a patient, the next he woke up to find himself neatly and thoroughly gagged and tied to a chair in his own office. _How_ had he gotten here? How had this happened? He could remember nothing. He struggled with the bonds, tried to make a ruckus so Williams or _someone_ would hear, tried to get near his phone or a scalpel or something, but whoever had tied him up was a very effective tier-upper.

Footsteps came hurrying down the stairs, and he tried to cry out around his gag. Into his office came Mr. Hand and the lovely Mrs. Phelps. They should have stopped, stared, rushed to help him, but instead they hardly gave him a glance.

"See if you can find the plaster of Paris," Hand said, and they each began looking through cupboards.

_What in the Sam Hill—?_ He tried to struggle again.

"Here it is," the woman said. There was a clink on the table behind him. The woman came up to him and examined his face, her own clinical, the face of a doctor looking at a wound, not the face of a woman distraught because her husband was dying. She had plastic in her hands; she tore it and laid it over his hair, taped it down with medical tape, and then she began to dab glycerine on his eyebrows.

He wanted to scream at her, _What is going on?_ but he couldn't make a sound. She and the man were working together with ease and almost with no discussion, like professionals.

And then it sank in. They were professionals. Counter-agents? The man upstairs in the bed—was it possible he was actually an agent sent here to find out what was going on? And he'd been outed by Jan's little accident, just as she had been? And his close friend just happened to be another agent, and his wife? Was she even his wife? No, it was all too coincidental. It was ridiculous.

Hand came over to him and put one hand on his chest, used the other to hold a cotton ball under his nose. Doc smelled the familiar, nasty smell of ether and struggled, but it was no use. The man was strong, and so was the ether. The world swirled away around him.

* * *

"Cinnamon, take this plastic sheet off the examining table and put it in the sterilizer," Rollin said.

With an eyebrow quirk, she obeyed, folding it up into a square pan and figuring out how to activate the machine. Rollin had spent some time thinking about his lack of latex and thought he had come up with a simple and effective solution. He could only hope it would work. He'd never tried it before.

He began gooping the plaster over Doc's face. He covered the whole face, taking care to keep air holes open. It set up quickly, and he was soon able to remove it with no harm done to Doc's face and examine his mold.

"Perfect. Put the gag back on him."

While she did, he went to the sterilizer and carefully removed the pan with a towel. The plastic had completely melted, and he couldn't help grinning as he poured it into the mold and swirled it around. _Who says you can't improvise a face mask at the drop of a hat?_ he thought jubilantly. When it was set up, he pulled the flexible, seemingly shapeless mask out, took his paints out of the case Cinnamon had brought, and sat down next to Doc to paint all the lines and color of a man's face into it.

Cinnamon looked through Rollin's case until she found a short wig and hair dye and sat down by the sink to turn the dark hair into the yellowed white of the doctor's hair. They had done this so many times there was little need of discussion. Anyone might have thought they'd been an acting team together, rather than Cinnamon being a fashion model whose ease and familiarity with the tools of the impersonator's trade had come through long association with and training by Rollin, the great impersonator.

* * *

Marty had everything ready. Jacket, food on a cart, gun tucked underneath it, just in case. It was 5 o'clock.

"The victim had a meal, food for one, went to take a bath, had a terrible accident," he reviewed. "I'll call for the order to activate." He picked up the phone and dialed Doc Tappert's office.


	12. Chapter 11

_Chapter 11_

"So, Mr. Williams," the posh chauffeur said, leaning on the truck Williams was working on, "tell me about this little town of yours."

"Well, what'd y'all want to know?" Williams said with his veneer of geniality laid over impatience.

"Well, what I really want to know is, who'd live here? I mean, pretty place, but you barely got a grocery store. You got two gas pumps. How do you _exist?"_

Williams' temper flared. He wasn't an American, not really, but if there was one thing he loved about America, it was his town, and his garage in his town, and these city slickers didn't need to come looking down their noses at it. "Now you listen good, young man. You from Las Vegas? Las Vegas isn't _real!_ This here's _real._ This here little town is what this country's all about."

Barney grinned to himself and let the garage man treat him to a lecture. Inside the garage, the phone rang, but Williams was too heated to hear it.

* * *

The phone rang. Cinnamon and Rollin both started and stared at it, then each other. It rang again, and again. Rollin sighed and reached over to pick it up.

"Hello?" he said in Doc's voice. He hadn't had a chance to practice it, but sometimes a voice got into his head and just came out of his mouth when he needed it.

"Doc? Marty."

He hesitated. Better pretend like he had company so he could speak generically and not betray himself. "Yellow!" he said genially. "Yellow."

He heard the man's voice on the other end whispering, "Yellow!" then aloud, "How long a hold?"

"I don't know. We're waiting on this end as well."

"Well, what's wrong?"

"Well, now, young man, you just keep your wife resting for a few days, and she'll be fine."

"Is somebody there with you?"

"Precisely," he chuckled.

"Shall I get back to you, or will you contact me?"

"Well, you just stay with your wife if you have to. I'll look in later."

"OK, Doc. We'll sit tight."

Rollin sighed with relief as he hung up and exchanged a glance with Cinnamon. Better hurry. "Cinnamon, I'll have to look sixty pounds heavier."

She nodded, looked around the office, found a medical jacket, and began experimenting with it and bandages.

* * *

"Funeral parlor, yeah, got it," Willy said, scrawling quickly. "I'll tell them." He got up and checked on Liz, who was beginning to make struggling noises on the cot behind him. "Sorry, ma'am, but you'll have to go back to sleep." He picked up Cinnamon's handkerchief and her little bottle of chloroform and gently knocked the nurse out again.

"Willy!" came a call up the stairs. He hurried to the head of the stairs.

"Yeah?"

"Need you to stow the doc," Rollin said.

"Right." He hurried down the stairs and accompanied Rollin into the office. "Jim's been telling me more—not talking yet, but he can move a little. He says the doc planned to kill him with some kind of drug and make it look like a stroke. That's what his other people expect. If we fake his death, we can get a hearse from Bakersfield and get him and the doc out in that. Means you'll have to stay in as the doc until we get the police in."

"Got it," Rollin nodded. "Take the doctor upstairs and secure him and then fix your truck and go to the funeral home in Bakersfield. Is there only one?" He rifled quickly through the doctor's phone book. "Looks like it. Cinnamon and I will arrange Jim's death. Alert the cops, and when we call for the hearse, have them be ready."

"Will do." Willy bent and lifted the unconscious doctor, slung him over his shoulder, and slowly slogged upstairs. He carried him into the room next to Jim's and found, to his mingled gladness and disconcertion, that the bed had restraints. In a few moments he had the friendly small-town doctor restrained very thoroughly, with a little extra ether shoved under his nose, just in case. Then he went back into Jim's room.

"Just about ready now, Jim. You'll be dying here pretty soon."

The edges of Jim's mouth stretched a little. "Goo…" he slurred out of a not-quite-cooperating mouth.

Willy took a glance out of the window as he had been doing periodically all afternoon. "Williams is coming. Better get myself bandaged up."

He hurried downstairs. Rollin and Cinnamon nearly had Rollin's makeup complete.

"Williams is coming. Barney'll stall him, but no telling how long. You better get upstairs with your sick husband, Cinnamon."

She gave him a quick grin, finished affixing Rollin's hair, grabbed as much as she could of the detritus of mask-making, and disappeared upstairs.

* * *

Barney was leaning against the car again. He'd stopped tormenting Williams a while ago. Suddenly he heard an exclamation from over at the garage and saw Williams coming over with a too-casual stroll. _Just noticed it was past five, huh?_ He ducked into his car and turned the key so that it made a grinding sound. Earlier, when Williams had been thoroughly buried in some work or other, he'd opened up the hood and made a quick adjustment, the sort calculated to make noise but not do anything serious. He made the car grind unpleasantly several times. Williams had no choice but to come strolling over, or else he wouldn't look like the genial mechanic he made himself out to be.

"Y'all having trouble?"

"It won't start."

"Huh. I'll have a look at it. Say, how's that truck driver fella? How's he doing?"

It really had been a long time since Barney had taken Willy inside. "Getting stitched up. It was a really deep cut."

Williams nodded and went around to the front of the car, popped the hood. Barney got out and took a look with a blank expression.

"What do you think it could be?"

"I don't know. Might be the fuel pump. Lookit. Why don't you take it apart and check it?" He was a little too eager.

"I—uh—I just drive 'em. I don't' fix 'em."

Williams plunked his wrench into Barney's hand. "Well, I gotta get in there, check and see how that truck driver fella's doin. He's been in there a long time." And he marched away, and Barney couldn't stop him without blowing his cover.

A moment's thought, and he leaned down into the engine and activated the car horn. Williams started and swung back.

"I—uh—musta touched the wrong thing!" Barney called.

Williams shrugged and veritably ran into the house.


	13. Chapter 12

_Chapter 12_

Outside a car horn sounded. Rollin and Willy glanced at each other, and Rollin seized a roll of bandages. He was completely made up as the doctor now. When they heard the front door open and Williams came into the office, casual-like, Rollin was just taping the last bit of the bandage to Willy's forearm.

"Anything I can do for you?" Rollin asked in Doc Tappert's voice. Williams didn't answer, so he looked up at Willy. "Well, now, you just take it easy with this arm, young man, and you'll be OK. Get a hotel and some rest. You lost a good amount of blood."

"Thanks, Doc. Well, I guess I'll go out there and see if I can get that truck rolling."

"Perhaps Williams can give you a hand."

"Be glad to!" Williams said cheerily.

"Sure. Goodbye, Doc." Willy gave them a grin as he went out of the office.

"Be right out!" Williams called after him. "He was in here an awfully long time," he said in a lower voice.

"Well, what with working with him, trying to keep him from fainting, juggling those people upstairs, I have just about had my hands full," Rollin said snappishly. He was prepared to give a blow-by-blow account of stitching up layers of muscle along with the skin, a delicate and time-consuming task, and of Mrs. Phelps going into hysterics over her husband, but Williams seemed to accept the simpler explanation.

"How's it going up there?"

"Well, he'll soon have his fatal stroke. 'Course I'll do my best to save him, but a doctor can only do so much. Soon as it's over, I'll have his friend call to Bakersfield for the hearse, and they'll be on their way."

"Whew. I'll be glad to see it."

_You and me both, friend._ "Get rid of the truck driver too, will you?" Rollin asked.

"Right." Williams gave a nod and went out after Willy.

* * *

The big truck driver was just crawling out from under his truck again, cradling his arm. "Hey," he greeted Bob. "Got it. It's an easy fix. Too easy. I was careless. Stupid."

"Y'all better get that fixed right next time you stop. Have a good rest in Las Vegas. Doc says your arm's pretty bad."

"Yeah, it'll be fine. I'm going to Flagstaff, anyhow. I'll stop there. They got a facility I can get it fixed at. Blame thing. Well, thanks, Mister. You got a nice little town."

"That's not what that big-city chauffeur says," Williams says sourly. "Well, have a nice trip. Take care of that arm."

"Thanks." The truck driver climbed into his cab, started it up, and gave a wave out of the window.

Williams waved back and turned toward his garage. Inside he picked up his switchboard phone and called his watchman on the east side of town. That was a little old man who perpetually sat on his porch with a rifle across the arms of his rocking chair. If anyone had asked, he would have given them a story about potting at them blame crows, and his neighbor would have intervened with a gently mocking, "He never shoots nothin'. His wife don't let him have any bullets."

"Truck coming through. Clear for exit," Williams told him.

The old man sat and watched the big white truck leaving town. If Williams had given the word, he could have taken aim from his house and dropped the driver as his truck was lumbering by. One of these days maybe Williams would give the word. But not today.


	14. Chapter 13

_Chapter 13_

Willy put the town behind him with a little relief and a little worry, for those he left behind there. If anyone found out Rollin wasn't Dr. Tappert, they had enough people to easily overpower him, Cinnamon, and Barney, according to Jim. A whole town of enemy agents! He shook his head as he drove, pushing the truck to its frustratingly slow limit.

It didn't take long to get to Bakersfield. He drove first to the police station, took a moment to replace his torn shirt and jacket with clean, professional clothing, picked up a wallet from a compartment, and went in.

"I'd like to see your captain, please," he said to the desk sergeant, flashing a highly authentic fake FBI badge at him.

The desk sergeant boggled at him and instantly disappeared into a back office. He returned momentarily.

"Please come back, sir."

In a moment he was shaking hands with Captain Alexander Guzman and introducing himself as Special Agent William Alpert. "I'm going to need your help, Captain. For some time I've been investigating a ring of jewel thieves near here."

"Near _here?_ Jewel thieves won't find anything out here in the middle of nowhere, Mr. Alpert."

"No, but they have easy access to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Flagstaff… Not to mention that the middle of nowhere is a perfectly inconspicuous place to hide. Normally I'd get my people in from Los Angeles to make the bust, but it's an emergency. They're holding one of my men hostage. I've got another man undercover, but I need as much backup as you can give me."

"Well, I can get you some state troopers. We'll have to interrupt their annual Hunters' Banquet, but they're used to that. You want 'em right now?"

"Within the hour. I still have a few preparations to make. May I have a private office to make a few phone calls?"

"Certainly. Anything we can do to help. We don't get much action around here. My boys'll be glad to help in a jewel bust. Why don't you just use my phone here while I go get them ready?"

"Thank you," Willy nodded. When the captain left the office, he sat down and began phoning the Los Angeles police.

* * *

Rollin glanced at his watch and ran lightly upstairs. Cinnamon had helped Jim sit up, propping his head up with pillows since he still had almost no control over his muscles.

"Jim, it's Rollin. Another half hour and we call for the hearse. You alright?"

The faintest of head nods from Jim.

"Good. I'm going to check on the doc. What room's he in, Cinnamon?"

"Down the hall to the left; second door."

"Thanks. She made any noise yet?" He nodded at Liz on the cot.

"No, she's out cold."

"Good. We'll be out of here soon."

He went down the hall and found Doc Tappert still unconscious. He left him as he was, to wake gradually, wishing he'd had time to make a mask of himself. Now all he had to do was wait out the time until Willy brought the cavalry. He went downstairs and began making a systematic search of the rest of the house.

* * *

Willy abandoned the white truck and let a police officer drive him to the Bakersfield Funeral Home. He took his FBI badge and went inside, and there he went through the whole song and dance again. When the call came through from Woodfield, he was there to take it.

* * *

Rollin helped Jim lie down again.

**"**Alright, Mrs. Phelps, start weeping," Rollin said. "Your husband just died. I'll call the mortuary."

Cinnamon nodded and pulled out her handkerchief. She was already tearing up, the better to have red eyes and a wet face should anyone come. Jim very faintly grinned. Rollin checked on the doctor again, who was just beginning to awaken. Perfect timing. He hurried downstairs and picked up the phone.

No doubt the thing was tapped in some way or other. In Doc Tappert's voice, he put the call through to Bakersfield.

"This is Dr. Tappert from Woodfield. I've just had an out-of-town patient die, and his wife would like a hearse to take him straight to Los Angeles."

"Of course, Doctor. One moment, please."

The female voice transferred him to another voice, which proved to be Willy's in faint disguise.

"Hello, Dr. Tappert. We can get a hearse down to you immediately. Would you like any additional transportation?"

"No, they have a car here. She'd like to get him home as soon as possible. They have a baby, poor lady."

Willy made a "tsk" noise. "There will be no delay. We've got a car ready. Does she have a preference for a casket?"

"She hasn't said. It's been quite a shock, quite a shock. But they're wealthy folks, so I'm guessing they'll be wanting something nice."

"Alright. Thanks for calling, Doctor."

Rollin hung up and went rapidly back upstairs. "Willy's on his way with the police and a hearse."

* * *

Williams hung up the phone attached to his switchboard and smiled to himself. The doc had done it! Complicated plan, but it had worked like a charm. He went back out to the doctor's driveway.

"Sorry about that," he said to the chauffeur leaning impatiently against his car with the hood open. "But you know how teenaged girls are. You got any kids?"

"Nope," the man said and got in the car to test the starter.

Williams finished the minor fuel pump repair and slammed the hood. As he did, he saw Doc standing at his front door making motions at the chauffeur. He leaned down into the window. "The Doc wants to see you about something. Come on, I'll get you out." He opened the door.

The chauffeur hurried over to the doctor, who told him, "That friend of Mr. Phelps just went to pieces. He won't be able to do any driving. You'd better stick around."

"Did Mr. Phelps die?"

"Mmhmm."

The man gave a resigned nod and went into the house. Doc gave Williams a half-comical look.

"I've never seen anything like it."

Williams grinned and went back to his garage.

* * *

In Los Angeles, police swarmed the Park Regent Hotel. Jan and Marty, waiting impatiently for further instructions from Doc, started violently when their door burst open. They had no time to struggle.


	15. Chapter 14

_Chapter 14_

The fleet of police cars stopped ten miles out of Woodfield, and the hearse pulled up behind them.

"Soon as the hearse gets back, we'll move in," Willy told Captain Guzman.

The captain nodded, and Willy got out and crawled into the back of the hearse next to the empty coffin.

* * *

"Hearse is coming through," Williams' watchman called through to him.

"Thanks." Williams hung up and went over to Doc's house, found him in his office, at paperwork, as always. Not only did Doc have normal doctoring paperwork to do, but he had reports to code for Headquarters. "Hearse is almost here, Doc."

"OK, thanks," he said abstractedly.

"How are they? Want me to go up and—"

"No, thanks. We had to sedate the friend. Liz is looking after the wife. Best to let the mortuary fellows do their thing unhampered and get them out of here."

"Alright. Call if you need me."

"Will do."

* * *

Rollin gave a sigh of relief when Williams was gone and ran upstairs again. "The hearse is coming. Jim, you'll have to spend a little while in a coffin."

Jim raised his eyebrow humorously.

"Barney, you better start taking bags out so they see you doing things. I think Williams is keeping an eye on the house."

"Does he suspect you?" Barney asked as he went downstairs with Rollin.

"I don't believe so. I haven't read anything in his behavior."

"Alright."

Barney took Rollin's makeup case and Cinnamon's suitcase out to his rental car. A few moments later he came back ushering in two men in suits with a coffin. The shorter one stared suspiciously at Rollin.

"There shall be councils taken," he said.

Rollin stared at him, and then suddenly he grinned. "Stronger than Morgul-spells," he answered. Willy had been going through a fantasy-reading phase recently, and traveling on the way to their latest mission he'd been going on and on about this English writer named Tolkien who worked poetry into his fantasy books. He'd insisted on reading some, and it had a good sound to it, a nice cadence, a sense of history and having been translated from some old text. Rollin wasn't into fantasy, but he was into poetry and had an ear for it the way he had an ear for voices.

"OK, that was weird," the man said. "I've never had to do secret codes before. I'm a police officer from Bakersfield. You Agent Alpert's man?"

"One of them," Rollin said. "What did he tell you?"

"A ring of jewel thieves is quartered here. We've got to get an injured man out before the troops come in. We're supposed to transport a live guy in this coffin?"

"Yes, he's expecting it. He's upstairs. We've been held hostage here, but we managed to get the upper hand. The rest of the ring don't know it."

"Alright, let's get this coffin upstairs."

The actual mortuary man looked disapproving but helped carry the coffin upstairs. Cinnamon started up as they entered Jim's room.

"Oh, thank God. Quick, get him in."

"That is the first time I've ever heard someone say that when they see a coffin," the policeman said.

"He needs to go in the coffin and get out of here," Rollin said. "Ready, Jim?"

"Huh," Jim said.

Rollin, the policeman, and the mortuary man lifted Jim gently and laid him in the purple lining of the coffin. "Alright? Comfy?"

"Huh," Jim said again.

They closed the lid, and the four men carried the coffin downstairs and set it on its wheeled cart. Rollin opened it immediately again.

"Let's get the Doc. He's coming with us. If no one else, at least we'll have him. Come on, Barn. Cinnamon, maybe you should stick Liz in a closet?"

The three of them went quickly upstairs, and Cinnamon disappeared into what had been Jim's room, while Rollin and Barney went on and found Doc lolling groggily on the bed. He was awake enough to be able to stare wildly at another himself coming into the room. Rollin and Barney unstrapped him, stripped off his medical jacket, forced him into Rollin's hunting jacket, and wrapped him in a blanket, then walked him carefully downstairs. He was too out of it to really know what was going on. Cinnamon met them downstairs.

"Alright, Cinnamon. Let's go."

The mortuary man closed the casket with an apologetic look at Jim, and he and the policeman trundled it out of the house. Cinnamon followed, sobbing visibly. She was one of the best criers Rollin knew. She could well up silently and bravely hide it, or she could break down hysterically, at the drop of a hat.

He and Barney half-carried the doc out, his head and shoulders swathed in the blanket. It was the worst disguise he had ever been part of, but Williams, leaning on the fence some distance away, didn't seem to have a problem with it. The men slid the casket into the back of the hearse; Barney swung the car door open, holding onto the doctor with one arm, and Cinnamon climbed in. Rollin and Barney carefully shoved the doc in after her and leaned him against her. He was still gagged. She immediately reached over and securely bound his hands.

Barney hopped in the front and started the car. Ahead, the hearse's engine started up, and the two cars pulled slowly forward out of the driveway, leaving Rollin standing in the driveway.


	16. Chapter 15

_Chapter 15_

"Clear the hearse going out, and the limousine after it," Williams told his watchman.

The watchman sat in his rocking chair and watched the hearse and long black car go by.

Williams went back over to Doc's house. He was still standing in the driveway. "Doc?"

"What?"

"That's that. It's a job well handled."

Doc wheeled on him indignantly. "It was terribly handled! Too much improvisation! I want a briefing right now with everybody."

"Everybody?"

"_Everybody, _while it's still fresh in their minds." He turned and stomped away into his house.

Williams stood staring after him. He was different. Shaken by this close call, Williams guessed. He was old, not as quick in the reflexes as he used to be. He'd have to be retiring soon. Williams hoped.

* * *

Willy raised himself up on his elbow and cracked the casket open. "Do you have enough air?" he asked Jim.

Jim nodded marginally.

"The police picked up the pair in Los Angeles. They're waiting for our signal now. We're almost there."

A few minutes later they came in sight of all the police cars, waiting by the side of the road. The hearse and rental car pulled up; Willy helped the mortuary man pull the casket out of the hearse and lifted Jim out into the black car, while Barney and the policeman removed Doc Tappert into a police car.

"Take this man on to the Bakersfield jail," Willy instructed the driver of the police car. "We'll be there shortly to take him into custody."

"Yes, sir."

"We'll follow you in our car," Willy told the captain. "Go in guns blazing." He got into the front of the car with Barney, and they peeled out after the police cars.

* * *

Williams poked his head in the office. "Everyone's in the meeting room, or near enough. Edgar's staying behind to watch the road."

"Tell Edgar to get hisself down here too. This involves him. Tell me when he's here."

Williams shrugged and left. Ten minutes later he returned. "Edgar's arrived."

Rollin wrote a vigorous last word. He didn't know what he was writing. "Thank you. Let's go."

He let Williams fall a step ahead. He'd long ago mastered the art of looking like he knew precisely where he was going when he was actually following someone. The man opened a door in what looked like a shed and went down some stairs into a large basement full of people milling around and looking confused. Rollin took a deep, quiet breath, then clumped into the room angrily.

"Sit down! Sit down!"

"Alright, quiet down!" Williams echoed. "Everybody take a seat. Come on."

People began to slowly move into their seats.

Rollin had spent the last half hour planning out what he would say. All he needed to do was keep all these people together in the same place so they could be easily rounded up. But he had to speak delicately, to keep from alerting anyone to the fact that he had no idea what he was talking about. He strode up onto the platform on one side of the room as they all looked to him to tell them what was what.

"Sit down! What we've had here is most unusual. We've worked our way through the problem, but the element of risk was too high. I suggest we review the entire case step by step, see where we can make some improvements. I'm beginning to believe that I made a slight error in judgment in not moving the first subject that came into town far away from our base of operations. I did what I thought best, but even so, there should be better ways—" He wheeled and stared at Williams, who had been wandering around and whispering to people and now seemed about to leave. "I didn't dismiss anyone."

Williams came up to the edge of the platform. "Liz isn't here."

"That's alright. I told her to get some rest. After all, she's born the brunt of this case."

"I signaled the house, and she didn't answer."

"She…didn't?"

"Uh-uh. She didn't."

Rollin took rapid stock. He turned to all the others. "You will all remain where you are."

A buzz of conversation arose behind him as he preceded Williams up the stairs. He stepped outside and paused in the rapidly-falling dusk; Williams turned to close the door, and Rollin struck him across the back of the neck, just as he had with the doctor. Williams quietly collapsed.

Lights swung through the darkness, and sirens. Rollin gave a wave and gestured over his shoulder to the shed. Policemen came pouring out of the cars and rushed down into the meeting place. With a sigh of relief, Rollin yanked the Doc Tappert mask off and strode down the line of police cars to the long black car that had pulled in behind them. He leaned down into the front window.

"Our people coming?"

"Yep," Willy said. "All the agents will be picked up in Bakersfield from the police station. I brought in enough troops to keep them subdued."

"Well done, Willy." Rollin grinned and went around to the back. Jim was leaning against Cinnamon. Rollin patted his shoulder with a smile, and Jim lifted his arm and patted him back.

"Everything's going to be alright," Jim said.

_The End_


End file.
